Ambassador to Cambodia wins Iowa Award

KENNETH QUINN PRESENTED THE IOWA AWARD

DES MOINES | Gov. Terry E. Branstad presented former Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn the Iowa Award at the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates on Friday, making him the 23rd recipient of the state’s highest citizen award since it was established in 1948.

Quinn, former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia, assumed the leadership of the World Food Prize Foundation on Jan. 1, 2000, following his retirement from the U.S. State Department after a 32-year career.

“Throughout his career, Ambassador Quinn has displayed leadership in protecting the world’s most vulnerable, working for causes to ensure we can continue to feed the world and fighting for freedom for refugees and helping welcome them to our state,” Branstad said in presenting the award.

At the age of 10, Quinn’s family moved from New York to Dubuque, where he graduated from Wahlert High School and Loras College.

During his diplomatic career, he served for six years in Vietnam during the war; on the National Security Council staff at the White House; as chairman of the U.S. Inter-agency Task Force on POW/MIAs; and as director of Iowa SHARES, the humanitarian campaign that sent Iowa doctors, nurses, medical supplies and food to starving Cambodian refugees. He worked closely with former Gov. Robert Ray in overseeing three waves of refugee resettlements into Iowa during the 1970s.

Quinn is regarded as one of the U.S. government's foremost experts on Indochina and has written a doctoral dissertation on the origins of the radical Pol Pot regime. He is widely acknowledged as the first person anywhere to report, in 1974, on the genocidal policies of the Khmer Rouge.

Inspired by the vision of Dr. Norman E. Borlaug — a Cresco native who is the founder of the World Food Prize and an Iowa Award recipient in 1978 — Quinn endeavored to build the annual $250,000 award into “the Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.”

Held each October in Des Moines on or around World Food Day, Oct. 16, the World Food Prize Laureate Award Ceremony, “Borlaug Dialogue” international symposium and Global Youth Institute have grown in size and stature under his direction.